Every Me and Every You
by glow vomit
Summary: Craig comes back to his and Tweek's dorm room to find his laundry strewn in precarious positions and his pack of cigarettes missing, and he reflects on why Tweek is probably the worst roommate ever.  Oneshot.


**Every Me and Every You**

I am standing in the middle of my dorm room surrounded by scattered laundry, defeated. Numb. I am wondering what I did to deserve this.

I'm not exactly neat. If I were neat, I wouldn't have ever asked Tweek to be my roommate, and none of this would have happened, but I'm not neat.

I do, however, fold my laundry nicely, and I really don't like people messing with my stuff. Knowing that, of course, is what inspired Tweek to do this. He's predictable like that.

And he really made a point of disturbing my laundry, let me tell you. He draped my boxers over his floor lamp, stuffed the microwave with pants, and he even hung a shirt from the sprinkler—not the sort of thing I would expect Tweek to risk. I'm scared to touch it myself.

Most of the laundry is at my feet, though.

And seriously? It's just the principal of the thing.

I check my desk, and just as suspected, my cigarettes and lighter are gone. That in of itself isn't the problem. I don't smoke tobacco all that often. It's fucking _Tweek._

And of course, when I look out the second story window, I can clearly see Tweek sitting on the lawn, chain-smoking the stolen cigarettes. I can't count on getting them back. I'm not sure if I can count on getting him back.

You know, for all Tweek complains about pressure, right now he is putting a lot of fucking pressure on me. That's probably his plan—he wants everyone to suffer as much as he does.

Well, he's doing a good fucking job of it.

I guess I need to back up a bit and explain when things actually started to get bad. It happened gradually, but the first thing I can pinpoint is this one night that I told Tweek to go to bed.

That's not really something you do. You have to respect Tweek's odd sleep patterns. But it was three in the morning, and he was sitting on the floor, surrounded by papers, but he didn't look like he was actually doing any of his homework. He just kept crumpling papers and throwing them across the room.

I didn't care that he was keeping me awake, exactly. To be honest, it just bothered me that he was stressing himself out so much for no reason. He was never going to finish that homework. It was in his best interest to give up.

So I said, "Why don't you just try going to bed?"

"Fucking hell, I have _insomnia, _you douchebag!" he said, tossing another crumpled paper.

"But you take sleeping pills."

"Yeah, well, it's only three. Why the hell would I go to sleep at three? I don't even have class until eleven, and you know what, I'm probably not even going."

"Just go to bed. You should at least go to class, like, once in two weeks."

"You know what? Fuck you, Craig. I will go to bed if you really, really want me to! I will take my fucking sleeping pills!"

He pointedly stormed to the other side of the room and opened his drawer full of prescription pills, poured a bunch of sedatives into his hand, and swallowed them dry. It must have been about ten pills. That was just one of Tweek's talents.

I know what you're thinking. I should have been worried. Hell, he did that for the specific purpose of worrying me—he does that all the time. But I know Tweek, and he can take a lot of sleeping pills and be fine. Sometimes he takes several and gets really high instead of actually falling asleep. His body doesn't give a shit what he puts in it. Sedating Tweek is a more difficult task than you would think.

He climbed under his covers just as angrily, muttering about what a douche I was, and I just kind of smiled to myself, because maybe I was a douche, but wow, he was _really_ being a douche.

I shouldn't even bother to mention that he absolutely did not make it to his eleven-o-clock class. Or his two-o-clock class. Or his four-o-clock therapy appointment. He awoke fifteen hours later, around dinner time, all disoriented and asking me where he was, to which I replied, "In your room, dumbass."

And I told him I was going to go to dinner and he could come if he wanted, but he begged me not to leave him, so of course I left him, because if he wanted to be with me so badly, he could've eaten like a normal human being.

That wasn't too weird for us, though. It was a little more serious than usual—Tweek had never overdosed specifically because of me before—but still, we had arguments all the time, so I didn't think much of it. And that night, he was bitching that I really should have woken him up in between sobbing apologies into my bedsheets as I lazily rubbed circles into his shuddering back.

But it only started getting worse. Like I said, he loves worrying me even though he's usually relatively okay. Okay is very, very relative when it comes to Tweek, but okay is okay. And he started being less okay, so maybe I should have seen that little incident as a warning sign.

And I was worried, but I was so frustrated because seriously, he has been doing these manipulative little things forever, but who knows how far they'll go? Tweek never has stuff under control, and if he thinks he does, that means he's getting delusional.

Tweek does this thing sometimes where he really doesn't like to leave his room. I mean, he generally isn't really someone who enjoys going out very much.

He only goes to the dining halls when they're not crowded, and he never goes without me, and usually he just gets takeout. Of course, Tweek's meals usually consist of cereal and coffee, which he has in our room anyway. And then Tweek isn't all that good at actually going to his classes because he gets worried that the professor will call on him, and then he feels ashamed by how many classes he has missed, so gets scared of being scolded for that and goes to class even less. Plus he finds class boring as hell and can't focus no matter how much Ritalin he takes. I don't blame him much for that, really.

But the point is, if Tweek is going to classes and meals, that is good for him. He never does anything more than that. Neither do I, really, but more for the reason that I don't care about many things, whereas I think Tweek would love to have lots of friends and go to parties, but instead, he cries in our room.

Anyway, Tweek started not leaving our room ever—unless he was smoking right outside it. I tried really hard to coax him. Okay, so I didn't try that hard. I'm not all that good at being proactive, so my coaxing went sort of like this:

"Hey, maybe you should get some food that isn't cereal."

"Go fuck yourself, Craig."

"Okay, fine."

I admit I do not know how to handle a situation. I've been dealing with Tweek's antics for years—the absurd anxieties, the conspiracy theories, and even the pissy, hysterical fits. He has always been a moody little bitch. I really thought I could handle him. And seriously, how could Tweek not be my roommate? I didn't want to get stuck with some perky kid who would try dragging me to parties, and Tweek doesn't do well with new people, and more importantly, we love each other. Or loved each other. I don't want to know which it is.

After all, there was the time Tweek stomped into our room, proclaiming, "I've fucked it all up." He looked like he was about to cry. He also did look fucked up. His eye bags were heavier than ever, his hair was sticking out at angles I didn't know were possible, and one of his fingers was clearly bloody from his skin chewing habit, but he didn't seem to realize that.

This was his first time really _entering _our room as though coming home to it in a while, since he hadn't been out much. That day, he'd had a meeting with his dean.

"You haven't fucked it all up," I said calmly. Tweek always thinks things are worse than they are, you know? So it didn't matter to me. "Here, let me get you a Band-Aid."

He stared at his finger as though entranced by it. And then he said, "You know what? I do not fucking need you to take care of me. _Oh, Tweek, honey, would you like a Band-Aid?_ No, I do not want a fucking Band-Aid, because I am going to go make a painting with all this blood and then I'm going to eat the painting because Tweek is batshit insane!"

"Whatever," I said.

"Yeah, _whatever,_" he snapped. "It's always whatever! Because you don't care bout things! Here I am pouring out my fucking heart to you, and you don't even care! Do you keep me around to make yourself look good? _I'm Craig Tucker, notorious slacker, but look, here's a kid who is worse at school than I am even though he spends every second worrying about it!_ Is that what I am to you? A way to make you look normal?"

He was really worked up, and I didn't understand how he even came to think those things because they were completely ridiculous. I didn't care what anyone thought of me. Why would I put up with an annoying shit like Tweek if I didn't genuinely like him.

So I thought I'd let it pass. Whatever.

He smeared his bloody finger on the wall and curled up in his bed with a handful of sedatives, and maybe I should have gone to hug him or something, but I'm used to him initiating the hugs—and I was also a little scared of him. If you are thinking you could handle Tweek better, then be my fucking guest.

He resigned himself to an existence of mostly heavy sedation instead of facing reality—except for when he made his origami. And okay, I love Tweek's origami. He always makes weird and original things that really suit his personality.

But that does not actually mean I want a bunch of paper echidnas to come pouring out of my backpack when I open it in the middle of class.

Tweek seemed intent on infecting everything with all his paper creations, though, as though they were a mark of his insanity. Of course, the origami was an attempt to be calm—something that was obviously failing him now.

And then there was the _laundry_. He wouldn't do his own laundry, but he told me to fuck off when I offered to do it for him. So his pile of dirty clothes was getting higher and higher, not that he had any occasion for clean outfits that weren't pajamas, but still. And if that wasn't bad enough, he would sob to himself until his sleeping pills knocked him out.

I suppose I really make the mistake of assuming this is how Tweek is and how he functions. Tweek is fairly tough, and he usually gets through these things.

Sometimes I wonder what goes on in that messed up head of his, but then I don't want to know. I do know there are darker things in there, things he doesn't like to share. He's pretty open about his problems if he doesn't explain them all the way—he worries about absolutely everything, and he can't sleep. People are quick to sympathize with that—especially if they only see the adorable little Tweek who needs to hold hands with me if we go to any place that's too public.

Tweek prefers to keep his darker side hidden—but lucky for me, I'm being treated to the outward manifestation of it.

And I admit I am powerless to this.

He's still on the lawn. I can see him flinching every time someone walks on the nearby path. He's more jittery than usual. Of course the anxiety would come crashing back at full force the second he wasn't zonked out on those sleeping pills.

And I want to comfort him, okay, but he is so mad at me, and I have no idea why. We have these markers that let you draw on the windows—Tweek loves them. He drew all kinds of weird shit when he was in a more normal-for-Tweek state. I rub out his abstract scribbles and write in giant blue letters—backwards, obviously, and very carefully—"I'm sorry."

I don't know what I am apologizing for, of course—probably something Tweek's paranoid mind made up. But if I can pretend that I know what I've done, maybe I can trick Tweek into feeling guilty for being such a jerk to me.

Because I am pissed as hell about this whole laundry thing. I shouldn't be the one apologizing, but I think it's necessary if I want a sniveling Tweek in my arms, begging for my forgiveness. He has to know what an asshole he has been. All I ever want to do is help him, even though I guess I don't put much effort into actually doing that, and it isn't my job.

Maybe I should regret a lot of things about this whole situation, like how horribly codependent we are. We come in a package. And neither one of us has really made a single friend in college outside of classes. That's probably not normal, not that we've ever been normal. I didn't think I would mind it, though. But I'm starting to think it would be nice to talk to someone when Tweek is like this. I guess all I can do is talk to Tweek.

That's when he actually turns around and notices my note as well as me staring at him. And he flips me off. He does that sometimes to tease me because flipping people off is my thing.

I return the favor.

And he puts out his cigarette—_my_ cigarette, that is—in the dirt and starts walking back into the building. Asshole.

"You're cleaning all this. I'm not doing it," is how I greet him when he walks through the door, muttering about how much he hates me.

"Are you fucking happy?" he says. "You got me to do something I shouldn't have done, and now I look like a giant jerk, and I have to apologize!"

"Yes," I say.

"_I'M SORRY, CRAIG_," he wails before succumbing to the tears that have been welling in his eyes.

I shake my head at him before grabbing his hand and leading him to my bed, where I tell him, "It's okay, Tweek." I know, I know. I am so whipped.

He doesn't waste any time before planting his lips firmly on mine. Tweek doesn't really like touching very much, and I know he doesn't exactly enjoy kisses—he finds them uncomfortably close. I let him initiate everything because he flinches a lot if I do, and he rarely initiates anything. He's doing this as a manipulation tactic because he knows it will completely melt my heart. It does.

And I know I can't magically cure him with my love, and this is out of my hands. I also know I should really reevaluate this relationship we have. But whatever.

I take him into my arms and say gently, "It'll all be okay, Tweek."

I'm not sure it will be. In fact, I know it won't be. But I live for these little moments where we are calm and intimate and loving and maybe even something like happy. He is shaking so much, but I think he feels a bit better now. I wipe away his tears with my thumb and repeat that things are okay. I can only hope that one day, that will be true.


End file.
